The story goes that Enrico Fermi was having lunch with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski. They were discussing recent UFO reports in the news, as well as faster-than-light travel. During this discussion, Fermi is credited with asking where everybody else is. Where are all of the other intelligent species that have to exist in the universe, and why can we not see them?

This question gets to the fundamental contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy and various high estima... [More]

I was twice stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, so I expected that I might recognize quite a few things. I guess 1993 is a longer time ago that I thought. Pretty much everything was new, paved over, or different.

The convention was great. Not overcrowded, lots of interesting people, great conversations and a good deal of laughter. I walked into the hotel and within moments was getting a big hug from my old friend Teresa Frohock. That pretty much set the tone for the whole weekend right there. She's one of my favorite authors right now, and did I menti... [More]